PayPal Opens Payment APIs to Developers

PayPal has announced plans to open its payment platform to third-party developers with the release of new APIs that enable developers to embed the company's secure global payment system into their applications and platforms.

PayPal has announced plans to open its payment platform to third-party developers with
the release of new APIs that enable developers to embed the company's
secure global payment system into their applications and platforms.
By opening up its payment platform, PayPal is enabling developers to
create new ways to send and receive payments for services beyond
traditional e-commerce. PayPal discussed its latest moves at a PayPal
Platform Preview Event in San Jose, Calif., on July 23 that was webcast
for developers all over. The company also said that it will hold its
annual developer conference, the PayPal X Innovate 2009 Conference, in San Francisco in November.

PayPal officials said the company has spent more than 10 years
creating its payments network for e-commerce and person-to-person
transactions. That network integrates 27 financial networks, 15,000
local banks, 190 global markets and supports 19 currencies, PayPal
said. According to a recent McKinsey report, the global payments market
represents a $30 trillion opportunity.

"Until now, developer innovation has been stifled by the barriers
payment systems impose," said Scott Thompson, president of PayPal, in a
statement. "With an open platform, we're solving fundamental challenges
people face when trying to pay or get paid and giving people the tools
to create new business models for their innovations."
Meanwhile, as part of its pilot program PayPal has empowered several
developers to use its new APIs. Companies that have taken part in the
beta include Twitpay, a Twitter-based payment service; LiveOps, with
its new on-demand workforce service called LiveWork; and Microsoft with
its Windows Azure cloud development platform.
"Using PayPal's new open platform, we've dramatically improved the
experience of commerce over the social phenomenon, Twitter," said
Michael Ivey, CEO and co-founder of Twitpay. "The global nature and
ubiquity of the PayPal service helps us deliver a great service for
Twitter users."
"The Windows Azure platform provides developers with a scalable,
interoperable cloud development environment to build and deploy
services and applications," said Yousef Khalidi, Distinguished Engineer
at Microsoft. "By allowing the developer community to take advantage of
the PayPal adaptive payment platform through the Windows Azure
platform, developers will have the opportunity to utilize a billing
solution for the Windows Azure platform services they offer by
providing customers with an easy online payment program option."
And speaking on LiveOps work with the APIs, Eckart Walther, LiveOps
senior vice president and general manager of LiveWork, said: "We were
impressed by the seamless integration and the flexibility of PayPal's
payment solution to address LiveWork's team-based virtual work force
model. With LiveWork, different workers can receive different payment
amounts based on client specifications. PayPal automatically calculates
and distributes the appropriate amounts to each worker and service
provider. Moreover, PayPal's established global payment solution allows
LiveWork clients to easily tap into the global work community."
In addition, PayPal officials said the company wants to hear
developers' ideas about innovative ways to handle payment in the
future. The company asks anyone with ideas to submit them to PayPal and
the world via Twitter with the hashtag #changehowwepay and can view
responses at www.changehowwepay.com.

Darryl K. Taft covers the development tools and developer-related issues beat from his office in Baltimore. He has more than 10 years of experience in the business and is always looking for the next scoop. Taft is a member of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and was named 'one of the most active middleware reporters in the world' by The Middleware Co. He also has his own card in the 'Who's Who in Enterprise Java' deck.